I am writing to learn more about myself 👣

Living kilometres away from home is an exciting idea when you were raised in a conservative home. Living in a foreign country is a dream for a curious mind like mine. I thought this would be easy because I wanted it so much but it is not.

Belonging has always been a challenge for me and I guess I am struggling in Russia at the moment. I have made friends and have settled in but trust is a process for me and I still haven’t found people that I can be myself with.

Today I had a particularly difficult day and I needed a shoulder to cry on. My mom and I argue a lot and are so very different but today in my dispair it was her that I frantically called.

I guess I am learning that my mama is home and that is where I feel a sense of belonging.

I am tired of the constant message that you need to love yourself before others can love you. That you are not deserving of love just because circumstances in your life have brought you to a place of self hate.

Self-love and self-care are important, you need to takecare of yourself always. However healing from the scars of your past should not be a prerequisite for love.

For many Self-love is a never ending journey you shouldn’t be deprived of love and respect from others just because you are learning to love yourself.

Your Journey of loving the self is about you and you alone. You can be broken and still love another fully. You can be shattered and still be worthy of a love that whole.

The following post is going to be about something that is not a popular opinion among People of colour (POC) but I think it is something that we need to talk about.

Black Womxn can hurt others and we do. We need to stop pretending that being a black Womxn is an exemption when it comes to creating Harm. Your oppression does not take away your ability to act as an individual. Your oppression does not remove your agency. You are not always correct just because you are oppressed.

As a black Womxn I don’t have the systemic power to be racist or sexist, even if I was prejudiced I don’t have the ability to oppress white folks or black men en masse. Racism and sexism are not just about prejudice but also about having the systemic power to oppress en masse. This is why black folks can be prejudiced but not racist ( A conversation for another day). However this wheel turns, Sometimes those without power rise to its upper echelons decades and decades later. Then you do have the power to oppress too, and have not considered the power of your own prejudices. It can be a potent mix. The Afrikaners were put in concentration camps by the British. They got to power and put people in Bantustans in South Africa. The Hutus in Rwanda were oppressed by their colonisers and they inturn became oppressors of the Tsuti’s. If we do not evaluate the fairness of our actions we can manufacture a devastating future.

We definitely do have agency, even when we lack systemic power, we should admit when we have rage and the consequences of our rage. The conversation I want to start right now is not about systematic power but about the indivudual responsibility of the oppressed.

Black men do not have the systemic power to be racist to white womxn but a black man can physically and emotionally abuse his white partner, Is he excused just because he is black and she is white? I know a cis-het-man who lives in fear because of the physical and emotional abuse he endures from his partner, is it not abuse just because the perpetrator is a poor black femme? Some of my most traumatic experiences have been because of bullying by some queer individuals, is it not bullying because I am heterosexual?

It is patronising to say to oppressed people that they have no agency, that their actions have no consequences. It is dangerous to stop holding people accountable for their actions just because of their identity.

Sometimes the harm/hurt that is caused is in response to something or it is unintentional but it is still there and we need to acknowledge it. Too many times when people are called out Identity is used as a shield/ answer/ reason because it is convenient.

We need to justify the legitimacy of our violence when we are being voilent and not pretend that our identity takes away our ability to be violent. We need to call each other out, actions and words are not the unquestionable gospel just because you are oppressed.

This is going to be a journey. I am learning to trust my creativity and I am hoping that this blog will allow me to grow and learn as a person.

I am Congolese, Was raised in South Africa and am currently studying in Russia. This is a developmental space for me. I will share some poetry, opinions on current affairs and document some of my personal experiences.

I will engage as myself on this blog. Confrontation triggers my anxiety and I try to avoid it and will step back from active confrontation when I am getting to a point where I feel like I have no control.

I also feel rage like anyone else and I express my rage in ways that will not trigger my anxiety. I am aware that people are different and respond to anger in different ways and so I respect and won’t police expressions of Anger that are different to my own.

I think it is important for me to share why my fear of confrontation is such a big thing in the first place because it will help those who follow this blog to understand me and my perspective.

So some context; my family moved to South Africa when I was 9 from the DRC. I was always a nervous child but my panic attacks only started at about 10. I couldn’t speak English when I started school and I was a target of bullying to the black kids as much as I was to the other races at that School. A year into my schooling I could speak the language but still had no friends and my little brother and I still hid behind the Tuck shop at break. The teachers who were all either Black or Brown were often just as bad as the students. Telling me how I would fail and be nothing was something my grade 5 teacher who was a black womxn repeatedly told me. I eventually just learned to be as silent as possible to be invisible in that school. One day in that grade 5 class the teachers was out and the class decided to taunt me, one of the boys repeatedly threw his soccer ball at me and everyone laughed every time I got hit at, some point the ball hit my head and bounced off on the girl sitting behind me. This girl stood up came to my desk asking for an apology, I slapt her without thinking in that moment and the class started shouting at me. Teachers were called and I was taken to the principles office. My mom was studying and my Dad worked long shifts as a Waiter and they had no time or belief in that school to protect me. After that incident, confrontation always brought back that moment when I stood up for myself but made everything else worse.

Years after that Junior school incident I was making-out with a boy in a room. He then started removing my clothes, I told him to stop and he laughed and fighting back made it hurt more so I froze until he was done. After that memories of this became another trigger for my anxiety.

Anxiety and depression are never to far away. Confrontation brings feelings of helplessness that triggers my anxiety which often leads to depression and suicidal thoughts. I am adamant about creating engagements that are different from the status quo. I want to create forms of engagements that do not harm people with mental health struggles.

I will call activists out on my blog, We need to call each other out as activists when the need arises. We can’t be calling people out while aso being problematic in the same way that they are and this is what I have noticed in a lot of progessive platforms.

We are born in a white-supremist, capitalist, patriarchal, cis-normative, trans-exclusionary society that requires toxic power pyramids to sustain itself. It is natural for us to gravitate towards what we know, to display strength in the only ways we have seen it displayed but if we are serious about transformation we will have to reimagine our spaces. We need to create spaces where our power/ affirmations are not dependent on completely destroying others first.

I hope this blog will bring learning, safety and healing to myself and those who follow my journey.

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